Celebrating 10 Years of Honoring Excellence
By Staff -- Multichannel News, 10/7/2007 8:00:00 PM
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Sidebars:
CABLE HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES, 1998-2007 |
Sidebars:
CABLE HALL OF FAME INDUCTEES, 1998-2007
In the 10 years since the cable industry’s Hall of Fame debuted in 1998, 65 of the industry’s most prominent and respected pioneers have been inducted into what has become the industry’s most revered and honored group of current and past leaders.
The Cable Hall of Fame celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2007 and adds six members whose innovation, creativity, vision and entrepreneurial spirit reflect attributes embodied by cable’s founding fathers.
The newest group of inductees will be honored at the Cable Hall of Fame Celebration during “Cable Days,” two days of events that will celebrate the industry. The event will be held at The Cable Center in Denver on Oct. 10-11.
Cable’s Hall of Fame is a microcosm of the industry’s storied and colorful past, as seen through the eyes and innovative spirits of legends such as George Barco, Bill Daniels, Irving Kahn, Bob Magness, Martin Malarkey, Milt Shapp, John Walson and many other pioneering entrepreneurs who have built and helped shape the industry.
| On the Agenda |
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| Cable Days’ Key Issues Series: |
| As part of the Cable Hall of Fame event, Cable Days will include a Key Issues Series on “The Future of User-Generated Content.” The series, set for Wednesday, Oct. 10, will feature several distinguished cable industry leaders discussing relevant topics from a variety of perspectives. The full Key Issues Series agenda follows: |
| 3:00-3:10 p.m.: Welcome and Overview |
| 3:10-4:10 p.m.: Changing Technologies, Evolving Consumer Tastes and New Usage Patterns |
| 4:10-5:10 p.m.: The Emerging Business Model |
| 5:20-6:20 p.m.: Legal Issues: Intellectual Property, Privacy and Consumer Protection |
| 6:20-7:00 p.m.: Keynote Address |
| 7:00-8:00 p.m.: Reception |
“This year’s class is a tremendous group of individuals, all of whom helped our industry become a vibrant and innovative business at the forefront of today’s media world. It will be an honor to welcome all of these most deserving inductees into the Cable Hall of Fame,” said Geraldine Laybourne, chairman and CEO of Oxygen Media, and a 2004 inductee who headed this year’s Hall of Fame selection committee.
Special honors will be awarded to Bill Bresnan, a 2000 Hall of Fame inductee, and Larry Satkowiak, CEO for The Cable Center, which hosts the Hall of Fame.
Bresnan, who has been The Cable Center’s driving force since its inception in 1994, will step down as its chairman. He will be replaced by Insight Communications CEO Michael Willner.
Bresnan and Satkowiak are being honored for their vision and work to advance the Center’s mission of providing the cable industry with a world-class resource for information, training and educational programs.
“The general public doesn’t understand what it took to build this industry — the technology, engineering, programming, financial risks and the business,” Satkowiak said. “It’s a great American success story, and a great example of people coming together to make an industry work. And people in the cable industry are some of the most generous. They want to make the world a little better place to be. The Hall of Fame recognizes those people.”
Six of those people are now members of cable’s Hall of Fame, including Doug Dittrick, whose passion was to be a history teacher — until his father advised him of the meager pay. Dittrick went on to found the highly successful Douglas Communications after learning about cable from Hall of Famers such as John Saeman and Monty Rifkin.
For Glenn Britt, chairman and CEO of Time Warner Cable, it was a journey through the cable ranks beginning with Time Inc., that defined his rise to the top of the country’s second largest cable company.
Cable’s innovative new technologies were what inspired Jim Chiddix, former OpenTV CEO and chief technology officer of Time Warner Cable, to join the industry and become one of its most fertile technological minds.
And for Anne Sweeney, co-chair for Disney Media Networks and president of Disney’s ABC Television Group, spending her formative days at the fledgling network Nickelodeon helped prepare her for the years to come and her rise to a top executive position at ABC/Disney.
Robert Wright, chairman of NBC Universal and vice chairman and CEO for General Electric, rose through the ranks of GE and ended up serving one of the longest and most successful tenures of any media company chief executive — more than 20 years at the helm of one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies.
And Barbara York, formerly with the Grocery Manufacturers of America, made the smooth transition from food to cable to become senior vice president of industry affairs for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.
All of the six new Hall of Fame inductees were chosen for their exceptional and ground-breaking work in cable, as well as for their continued dedication to the advancement of the industry’s ideals and objectives.
And one of the most vocal advocates of the Hall of Fame and The Cable Center has been Bill Bresnan, who in 1994 was instrumental in moving cable’s museum to Denver and fostering the idea of a Cable Center to house the cable industry’s many artifacts and historical documents.
The Center has since become the industry’s foremost clearinghouse for information and has evolved into a prime resource on a global level for cable and telecommunications information. It has also grown its educational programs to include content, technology and professional development.
“We had to overcome the perception of the center being just a museum and what it really represents. And we had to define its mission. Now, I see what’s in the development stage at the Center, and it just floors me. We are in a great position to tell cable’s story, from building amplifiers and signal strength meters to high-speed Internet. We’ve come a long way,” Satkowiak said.
And so has the Hall of Fame and the peripheral events that have grown around the induction ceremonies. For the first time, the Center will host a Cable Days program that includes industry executives participating in a series of events.
The Cable Center: Leaner, but Flourishing
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